Tête  a  tête
by KyuzoFan
Summary: Ichigo and Uryuu have a talk about responsibilities and saving the world. Not IshiIchi.


For several days now, Uryuu felt that Kurosaki sought him on purpose. Another invitation to lunch at school was presented to him, unusual as it was after he had firmly stressed that he preferred to eat alone. Kurosaki unconsciously turned his way more often. And he spoke to him more often too, trying to strike up some conversation. Uryuu was not fooled that Kurosaki found the topic of school extremely fascinating to discuss with him, but obviously whatever he wanted to talk about was making him uneasy, so he waited patiently – or rather, impatiently – to learn whatever devil had entered the orange-haired head of the shinigami.

The preparation for the incoming all-out war was making some progress for their small group personally since they had agreed to train together every other day in the underground training place that Urahara had kindly let them use. In fact, Ururu and Jinta would join them every once in a while, Tessai was invariably needed to help with the injuries when Orihime was unable to, and the annoying merchant would stay with them for hours at a time, giving advice, reproaching or praising. His praise, however, was mostly reserved for Orihime, who generally trained with Rukia, and the others did not complain. They felt that he had to make it up to her after being partially to blame for Orihime's kidnapping to Hueco Mundo.

Since the two girls would most often train together, and Renji and Sado liked to engage in their incessant combat that they had previously started, this would usually leave Uryuu against Ichigo. On the outside, the two of them would grumble about this arrangement, but Uryuu was secretly glad. Kurosaki had already proved to be a formidable opponent, with a strength matching, or exceeding, captain level of the Gotei 13. His skill was altogether another story, and Uryuu, who himself had both high reiatsu capabilities and the advantage of having trained intensively since very little, was often able to break through his defenses. In these cases Kurosaki would lash out on pure instinct and with his power only, which seemed very difficult for him to control, and Uryuu would find himself treated by Tessai afterwards. Urahara made a lesson out of it, a very hard one indeed, at least for Kurosaki. He insisted that Uryuu provoke him to the brink of anger constantly in order for the shinigami to learn how to control himself and channel his power in a sharp, cutting edge. Uryuu sometimes got a kick out of it, especially when Kurosaki threw back at him the verbal insults and challenges, but for the most part he bitterly wished that Urahara was the one at the receiving end, to see how it felt to be targeted. Kurosaki was a scary opponent and in order to deal with him, one needed to be a psychical virtuoso. Only too well, then, that Uryuu was one.

It seemed that Kurosaki was unhappy with his progress on the mental level of combat, because he requested one day that they make an extra training session on the following afternoon. Uryuu would have refused out of sensibility and self-concern for the state of his battered body, but he felt that the subject that was on Kurosaki's mind would probably be breached if they were alone, and he was curious.

Kurosaki lacked some of his usual vigor when they met on the next day, and he fought none too enthusiastically against Uryuu's best attacks. His mind seemed to be preoccupied even in battle and he left many openings. Uryuu held back, but after one particularly sloppy attack that left his side very vulnerable, he stopped before releasing the arrow.

'What's with you?' he snapped irritably. 'Look at your left! If I'm to shoot now, you will probably be dead or seriously incapacitated!'

Kurosaki gritted his teeth for a moment, but then looked down and acquired a sheepish, if somewhat defeated, look.

'Can we stop for today?' he murmured. 'I'm not on top of things right now.'

Uryuu nodded and left his arrow loose somewhere toward the rocks, where it made a small explosion. His bow expired and he lowered his hands.

'There's something…' Kurosaki hesitated, but only for a second, 'that I wanted to talk to you about. Is that all right?'

He was uncharacteristically moody and Uryuu's curiosity was even more piqued. 'Go on,' he said as he tried to make himself sound reluctant instead of impatient.

Kurosaki did not speak again immediately, instead putting his rewrapped zanpakuto against a rock and reached for the bottles of water that Ururu had brought down for them on Urahara's orders. He drank for a long time, then spilled some in his hand and splashed it on his dusty face. Uryuu picked a bottle himself and drank some, then settled on the ground. It seemed that this would take some time.

Finally, with a bottle in his hand and a faraway look in his eyes, Kurosaki said, 'I wonder if I made a mistake after all.'

Uryuu did not speak, merely looked at him.

'With my accepting the offer that Rukia did to me,' he added after some time. 'She was hurt, and there was this hollow, and my family was in danger… I did not hesitate to thrust that sword through my chest, even if it was the craziest thing I'd ever done. And probably the biggest mistake of my life.'

He looked down at his hands and touched the handle of his zanpakuto carefully, as though examining it for the first time. Uryuu changed positions.

'Kurosaki,' he snapped, 'I'm not your therapist or psychologist. Try to make more sense, if you could.'

This seemed to awaken the shinigami a bit, as he put down his bottle and shook his head to clear it.

'The thing is… I wanted to protect my friends, didn't I? And my family. And that mountain load of people, though that came later…' He laughed briefly in remembrance of their talk amidst the piling hollows, right before he saw a Menos Grande for the first time. 'But if you look at it from the other side, it's my fault that they are in danger now. If you look back far enough, you can see that it was my actions that things in motion… first Rukia losing her powers and forced to live in a gigai by Urahara, who had concealed the damned Orb in it, Aizen stealing it, and… and… Inoue and Chad developing these powers, 'he added sadly, 'and then wanting to fight.'

'Well, of course they'd want to fight. They too want to change things. And, honestly, I'm surprised that your brain can handle remembering so many events,' Uryuu sniped, crossing his hands. He was also surprised that one could handle feeling this tremendous responsibility for everything that had happened. What was it like to feel the weight of the world in your shoulders? He carried only the responsibility for his own actions and his own self; lately also for those people he had a right now to call his friends. They were accompanied with his obligations toward the Quincy pride. And on times, it got too much for him. He could hardly begin to imagine what it must feel for Ichigo.

The latter looked at him, annoyed, but did not pursue revenge for the insult. He stared off into the distance again and continued:

'Yeah, they're that kind of people, they want to fight and help. But, damn, if it wasn't for me in the first place, they'd never have this power; they'd never be in the way of danger.'

'What do you think they would prefer?' asked Uryuu incredulously. 'To be the victims? Helpless and defenseless? Power means you can protect yourself, and those around you. You know it, I know it.'

Kurosaki sighed and rubbed his face wearily. 'Well, yeah. I though so, but I'm not strong enough to protect them, it seems, so why did I take this power in the first place? I'm still useless, and they are in even more danger – damn, everyone is in even more danger because of that. I know, Rukia said 'Get stronger in order to protect them,' but I've caused them so much trouble already…'

Uryuu shifted uneasily. This ran deeper than he had thought, and he doubted his own ability to handle Kurosaki in this mood.

'You should ask someone else for answers to this,' he said, avoiding making eye contact with Ichigo. 'I don't think I'm the person to tell you about it, I'm not a shinigami.'

'Yes, but you're… well, we didn't start out as friends, we started as enemies, right?' Kurosaki countered. 'If I ask Inoue or Chad, I know what they'd say, but I also know you'd tell me straight away what you thought, not making it pretty or easy for me. And you know what it's like to have great power. And,' he coughed a little at that, 'you're smart. You have probably thought on the subject and figured out some answers.'

Now Ichigo was the one avoiding eye contact, so Uryuu glowed smugly with the reluctant confession of his constant irritant for several seconds and then stored it away for later. Apart from that, did Kurosaki still think of him as his enemy? That was curious, but also a little hurtful. Uryuu chose to ignore it for the moment and concentrate on the matter.

'I'd say you blame yourself unnecessarily,' he shrugged. 'You don't need to carry the world on your shoulders, you know. Nobody is going to thank you for it, and you must have some very high self-opinion to think that everything happens because of you.'

His brisk words had apparently not been what Kurosaki had expected, because he stared at him startled.

'Ishida,' he said after a minute of stunned silence, 'first, I take my words back, you're an idiot, and second, what unnecessary part do you see here? _I made the decision_, it's my choice.'

Now was Uryuu's turn to sigh and push his glasses up, and he did his best to show his exasperation.

'I keep up my opinion that your brain must have been construed incredibly wrong,' he sniped back. 'Have you, by any chance, missed the part of your training with Urahara here to obtain your shinigami powers back? The powers that had been transferred to you by Kuchiki-san were gone, but you had powers of your own, you _moron_, and you ooze reiatsu-'

'That sounds, like, disgusting,' Ichigo muttered.

'-so, your powers were going to manifest one way or another!' Uryuu exclaimed. 'And if you had not become a shinigami, and reined them in, you would have done something inadvertently, like destroying a building or worse…'

'Yeah?' Kurosaki seemed to be even more startled by this statement. Uryuu rolled his eyes.

'Kurosaki, do you even _think_? When you began to consider the possibilities and conditionals, you should have thought about that! There is no 'what if' about your powers, they are there, and it's your-'

'Don't say destiny,' Ichigo interrupted, 'I hate this crap.'

'I wasn't going to, will you stop interrupting me?' Uryuu ground out. 'It's your call. It's not inevitable that you should play this part, but you seem like you want to, and…' he stopped there.

'What?' Ichigo insisted, looking at him intensely.

Uryuu bit his lip, but he knew that he should finish the sentence, and he knew that he believed it, too.

'You are the best suited person to do it that I know,' he said, declining his gaze and pushing his glasses up.

Ichigo was rendered speechless for a moment. Then Uryuu stood up and shouldered his bag, left on the rock beside Kurosaki's zanpakuto.

'I'm going home,' Uryuu announced, noting with some smug pleasure that Ichigo was still having trouble finding his words. He was such a dumbass. Just as he seemed ready to say something, Uryuu whipped back to deliver the final blow.

'And one more thing,' he said with satisfaction, 'we may have been enemies, but now we're friends. Live with that.'

He must have felt humiliated to admit it in any other circumstances, Uryuu concluded, leaving behind a gaping Ichigo as he started to climb the ladder, but it felt as though he had rubbed Kurosaki's nose once and for all. He smiled widely. One up.


End file.
